Time to Talk Recovery

On Mondays, I'll be releasing weekly musings on sobriety, recovery, and yoga.

I had this bolt of lightning the other day that I should start a recovery blog! Then, I remembered I already have this blog and that I spend my time relating most things I do back to recovery anyway. Radio Detox is about recovery from fiat. I have the life I have today because I am a person in long-term recovery from drugs & alcohol.

So rather than start yet another blog, I'll release a Monday version of Destiny Architecture about recovery/sobriety on Mondays, starting today.

Why Mondays? Because I show up on Mondays. People in recovery know this! If you don’t show up on Monday, they think you’re using!

Why The Time to Talk Recovery & Sobriety is NOW

I've been off drugs for 25 years, off alcohol for 13 years, and I'm a yoga teacher in Arizona. There's a LOT of "yoga plus substances" here, which, in my opinion is NOT yoga. More importantly, that type of yoga is NOT for me.

If you'd like to join me in substance-free yoga, you're more than welcome.

There's no "plant medicine" here or "hape ceremonies" or encouragement of using anything that can pop hot on a UA. The point of yoga is to find union without a head change. Yoga helps us raw-dog life. It helps us to handle the mental side of life by aiding in the creation of neuroplasticity. It helps us to deal with trauma.

I can write and teach volumes on this.

But I can't find anywhere in the yoga sutras that says "get high to experience" yoga. I can find dozens of places where the sutras support living a life of self-study, balance, and contentedness. Yoga can prepare us to deal with the fluctuations of the mind, substances only give us a false sense of muting them temporarily.

Yoga sutra 1.2 tells us we practice to calm the fluctuations of the mind; substances alter our brain chemistry.

"Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind." - Yoga Sutra 1.2

You can master your mind without altering its state through substance use. Many rehabs will extol the virtues of yoga because they are evidence-based. Yoga teaches us moderation, or right use of energy with brahmacharya, for example.

Yoga also helps us to calm the nervous system. This is done through breathing, meditation, and asana practice. I teach yoga nidra as yet another tool of wisdom in yoga that helps you to calm anxiety and find true rest.

Soon, I'll be offering a yoga nidra practice here. I'll be adding more great stuff to help you in your practices. I'll have an awesome announcement soon for yogis in Phoenix! Yoga tidbits will still land in your inbox on Wednesdays. Sobriety tidbits like this one will drop on Mondays.

I'll be writing about how yoga and recovery are related. For example, some rehab probably taught you "box breathing." But did you know that's sama vritti, a technique that comes from yoga?

I will also write about all the things that help me rawdog life.

From what helps me sleep to what kind of workouts I'm into. I'll share how I spent all this sober time I have, how I deal with family around the holidays, and other things sober folks can relate to.

I also want to provide a safe space for sober yogis.

Sometimes, we can feel left out of a world of "yoga + wine" in a culture that prizes "let's go get a drink" after a yoga class. Phoenix has THC-friendly yoga classes, which...to each his own. However, that will never be true yoga to me.

Today, there's a new emerging problem in yoga circles: kratom. I do NOT recommend it as it's become a huge problem for my friends who work in the addiction field in Kansas. What seems like a "natural" idea can quickly turn into a $300-600/day habit.

I've always been a fan of real yoga that's gimmick-free, safe, and does the job. This is why I teach trauma-informed yoga and yoga nidra as well as the more athleticly-inclined power yoga or vinyasa. No goats, kittens, or puppies. No wine or anything to light on fire and/or inhale. Just straight yoga, no chaser.

I'm truly excited about what's to come! Have a wonderful sober Monday!